


Roxy Lalonde's Terrible, Confusing, No-Good Teenage Romance Problems

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 20:00:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6438274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jane ghosts you, you have every right to get a new girlfriend. It's just that things are a lot more complicated when Jane comes back, and you figure out you still like her a lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roxy Lalonde's Terrible, Confusing, No-Good Teenage Romance Problems

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trebleDeath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trebleDeath/gifts).



Jane Crocker was your first everything.

That’s the thought that strikes you now as you rumble along the back of the bus, turning over one of your more favoured figurines. It was a present from her on your thirteenth birthday. She painted it herself, because she’s good at that kind of thing – it’s a lady wizard, with purple robes that had bright pink stars on them, and blonde hair. And a white beard, because Janey’s always been that kind of a jokester. She was your best friend.

Might still be your best friend. You don’t really know that right now. Not the way you left things on such weird terms.

You had thought it was the decent thing to do, and that it might even kind of be exciting. Profess your love for her in a fifty page short novel. Your mom had thought it was a great idea, she had even helped you proof read it for errors – a girl can’t be sloppy about putting her sick moves on another lady’s heart, she told you. Okay, maybe not in those words. It doesn’t matter, anyway, you think, and shove the figure back into your rucksack.

The story was supposed to be one of those fun, romantic kinds of things that you look back on when you tell your kids the story of you two falling in love. Or like, maybe your cats. Either way, you had planned on this bomb story to blow Jane’s socks off. You had even mailed it to her house, all stealth like, so it would be kind of like a present. And then you two could have started the new school year with a girlfriend, and a really hot girlfriend that you already talked about to basically everyone at every possible moment, and you were going to get to be really generally nauseating in the way that teenage love always is. It was going to be great.

But that didn’t happen. Because you sent the book to Janey about a week before school started, and she had dropped a truth bomb on you: she was going to spend the year at some stupid new private school that her adoptive mom thought would be good for her. An old school kind of deal that didn’t allow computers or phones. She’d read your book on the way there, yeah, but there would be no jubilous Skype reunion. There would be no late night phone calls saying ‘no, you hang up first’ back and forth until somebody did it for you or you fell asleep.

She told you she’d write.

It’s already December, and you haven’t heard one stinking, lousy word out of her. Not one! Not. One.

You thought you knew Janey better than that. Sure, there were ladies who weren’t into other ladies, and that was chill. When writing it, you didn’t really know whether or not Jane would be up for dating you. But you had figured that you were good enough friends that she wouldn’t totally ghost you when she figured out that you were making romantic overtures.

Once she called one of your cats mangy and after you’d hung up in a mock huff, you’d found a cake on your doorstep the next morning that read ‘Sorry :(’ in chocolate sprinkles. You figured anybody who could pull off something like that would at least give you notice if she didn’t want to be your friend.

Your mother had understood your ennui when she’d finally pried it out of your reticent lips. She had let you lag on your virtual studies for a little while, and bundle yourself up in blankets and watch the Princess Bride twenty times in a row, and a bunch of other ridiculous, self pitying crap.

But today, she didn’t allow that. Today, she’d left a bag with your bag of dice and your Dungeons and Dragon’s handbooks and your favourite wizard figurine and a note explaining that she’d set up a tabletop gaming date for you with the kids of her editor, and some of their friends. And you were going to go, and if you were miserable at least you could take out your feelings through arcane dark arts there instead of dripping chocolate sauce over everywhere.

Okay, so she didn’t say the last part. But it was implied, you think to yourself as you watch the scenery pass by. It goes from a crap ton of trees to just a ton of trees as you get closer, and ultimately you take a deep breath and resign yourself to the drudgery of talking to other people when all you want to do is curl up in a ball and die.

Her editor’s house is real freakin’ big, you think, even though you technically live in what could be described as by some as a compound. But this seems bigger to you, just for the fanciness of it. It’s got these real big, ornate columns that you think you remember somebody describing as Corinthian, once. That was it, right?

You knock on the door, which has a really weird seahorse motif to it, its tail curled around the knocker. Which, whatever. You can admire someone who sticks to their guns in décor choices.

Your mind has just come around to the subject of how to make a sweet cat door detail when somebody opens it. A dude who looks like five feet and five inches of not giving a crap and a caffeine intake that’s a lot lower than he’d like it to be at this hour of the godforsaken morning. Good. You’ve found your people here.

“You Rose’s kid?” he asks.

“Yeah.” you reply. “I like your columns.”

He sniffs. “Well. At least one a you’s got some taste. Come on. Shoes off.”

He looks like one of those people too, but you take your shoes off like he tells you and stick them in a little cubby he has at the front door. You immediately realize that you are so glad you’re polite – his floors are heated, and for just a moment you are the happiest you’ve been in a while as your frostbitten toes get some relief.

The interior of the house is exactly as minimalist as the outside, which is to say that you get an idea that the dude you just met collects chandeliers or some crud. Well, with how popular your mom’s books are, he can probably afford them, you guess.

He leads you up the stairs – which are heated too, you are absolutely going to live here, your mother will just have to deal with it or move in herself – and towards a room where the door is already open, and you can hear a very spirited debate taking place.

“Good luck.” your mother’s editor tells you, before trudging back down the staircase. You take a deep breath.

When you round the corner, the bickering is still going on.

“Tell me again how to run my campaign, and I can personally assure you, you’ll be playin’ a Halfling prostitute with very low charisma.” one of the boys says. Well, okay, that’s really presumptive, but you assume they’re a guy, just like you assume he’s the editor’s kid. Mostly because aside from a stronger jaw and a much nastier look on his face, he’s the spitting image – dark hair, pale face, and under eye circles that says he does not appreciate being made a member of the waking world. Which is what you always thought concealer was for, but okay.

“And I’m telling you. That if you. Don’t allow barbarians in your game. You’re a crap DM!” the other guy, who you assume is a guy and also has some kind of pituitary gland problem because wow, he is Large, shouts right back.

“You need a wizard for the party! What kind of half brained troglodyte are you to where you can’t see that-“ the other kid starts in, but you clear your throat.

“Wizard.” you say kind of weirdly, not quite sure what to do with your hands other than point at yourself. Normally you have a pretty winning smile, but today it’s kind of like a grimace as five heads swivel to look at you.

They all look about your age – there’s the little editor; and then the big shouty guy who is all shoulders, shaved head, and glare; then a smaller, more slender version of him who is glaring at who you presume is her brother or something like it; a girl with huge green eyes who’s been spinning around a cat person figurine; and –

“Dirk!” you squeak happily, and rush over to hug him.

“Wizard.” he replies, and you ruffle the back of his hair in the way you know he hates, even though it barely budges the super stiff hairspray. You knew he had moved up this way for college, but you didn’t know he was actually like, here!

Your DM raises his brows.

“Cousins.” Dirk says, and the other guy’s lips curl into a very particular, sleezy expression before Dirk puts a finger up in front of him. “Hit on her and this party loses its wizard and its fighter, Cronus.”

Cronus frowns, but shakes it off, settling back into his manual.

“Well, at least we can get on with this painful sham of a campaign now that our barbarian is satisfied.” he says, sneering at the bald guy. “And I ain’t talkin’ about your character, Caliborn.”

“Get on with the intro. You sad excuse. For a story teller.” Caliborn snorts back as Dirk hands Cronus your stat sheet.

“Shouldn’t we get to know our wizard?” the girl next to Caliborn says. You decide that she is an adorable angel and that you like her.

“No.” both Cronus and Caliborn answer, and you blow a big, wet raspberry. The girl laughs.

You think you’re going to like this just fine.

-

It takes a few sessions before you really start to bond with the other players, but you kind of do.

Meulin, for instance, is a huge cat fan, and you’ve had her over a couple of times just to wallow in the cute fluffiness of your dozens of cats. She’s also huge into hiking, and your mom’s investment in an ape gone bananas huge amount of forested land is something you both like to explore.

Cronus was a little harder to relate to. But once you actually gave him the time of day outside of the session and humoured him, he figured out who your mom was. He has literally not shut up about her books since then, which is okay, because you have a hard time shutting up about them, too. During game breaks, or sometimes before everybody else shows up, he exchanges you one of his songs for a couple of pages of whatever you’re writing. It’s become a pretty good system, despite his more skeevy lyrics at times.

Dirk’s… Dirk. He’s always going to be Dirk, and despite testing out of highschool entirely and already working on his engineering degree, he’s still pretty chill. The only exception to this rule is that, for some reason entirely beyond your comprehension, he’s dating the mass of testosterone and vitriol known as Caliborn. It would be funny to watch him get so possessive over Dirk whenever you’re around except that it’s more annoying than anything else, and he gripes a lot about Dirk spending more time with you than him, so both of you have to hang out with Dirk at the same time.

But that’s almost okay, in a way. Because that means that you’ll see dear, sweet Calliope.

For every nasty glare that Caliborn gives you, Calliope is there with a sweet smile. They’re built kind of similar, with real dark skin and a weird ultra-flush to their cheeks. No hair, too, which you found out wasn’t a fashion statement. But Caliborn is almost six feet and still growing, despite only being barely seventeen, whereas Calliope is a little shorter than you, and very slender. They both have long lashes, but Calliope’s eyes are this sweetly expressive hazel kind of colour, and when she’s looking at you, you could get lost in them.

You have gotten lost in them. You are perpetually lost in them. They are the best thing, and it would be a problem except for you kind of don’t care when you lose track of whatever Caliborn is ranting about this time.

Okay, it’s maybe a little bit of a problem. Because right now, you are busy staring at Calliope’s eyes as they move over your latest story, and you have no idea what she just said to you.

“Huh?” you ask. She sighs.

“Roxy, you should really stop spacing out when people are talking to you.” Calliope replies, but she’s smiling. You like her smile. It’s weird, it’s another thing that she and her brother share – these great big grins where their dimples poke into their cheeks. You would marry somebody like that. You think it might actually be what got Dirk to give Caliborn a go, and – oh. Oh. She’s talking again. “-Script is pretty good so far. I really don’t know about the princess, though. Don’t you think we should know what she’s doing? Is she being tortured? Is she happy?”

You feel your lips slide into a frown, and your head sinks from your hands down to the table.

“I don’t know.” you reply. “I don’t know if the princess is happy.”

“Well then how will we know whether the rogue is really saving her? I mean, what if she’s started a new life? What if she just left because she wasn’t happy? I think –“ she pauses. “Roxy? Are you okay?”

You let out an ugly kind of sniff, and are immediately glad that Dirk and Caliborn went to go play in the arcade section of the pizza joint, because yeah. Yep. Here come the waterworks.

Instead of just leaving you to weep like any normal kind of person, you feel Calliope sit down beside you. One arm wraps around you, and she sort of hugs you to her side. It’s February, and even the entire dang pizza place is covered in badly glittered hearts and pink streamers. You feel like crap, though hugging Callie keeps you from feeling that way completely.

“I’m sorry.” she says, and you just kind of shrug.

“S’okay.” you mutter, and she smooths her hand through your hair. She’s got hella nice nails, all long and filed. It feels really good when she starts to scratch at your scalp like you’re just one big blonde cat with a lot of messy emotions.

“Maybe… The rogue should find someone else in the meantime?” she offers, tentatively.

“Yeah.” you agree. And then, weirdly, you feel a kind of surge of anger, and then enthusiasm about it. You sit up. “Yeah! Why shouldn’t she? She’s got a lot to offer, and the princess just split for no reason! Without a word! To her best friend!”

“Roxy, you’re yelling.” Calliope tells you, and you are. You’re also standing up on top of the plastic seating to the booth, and you drop back down into it on your butt, kind of bashful.

“Heh. Sorry about that.”

She laughs that pretty little bell laugh you like so much, and her smile squeezes out her dimples. It’s really, really difficult not to sigh dreamily like some awful pre-teen romcom parody of yourself.

“Um, on another note. I was wondering… Maybe we could… Work together?” she says. “Um. That is to say, I draw a bit, and it might be nice to, um. Illustrate your work?”

You stare at her for a minute. Just flat out stare.

“I mean, we don’t have to. I understand if that’s stepping on your toes, I certainly wouldn’t want to-“

“Callie.” you say, serious. She looks at you with wide eyes. “Will you actually marry me?”

Laughter bubbles up out of her, taking her nervous energy with it. “I think you date first, don’t you?” she asks.

“Deal.” you say, taking her hand, and she makes a small noise that sounds something like ‘meep’. You grin, and add, “Girlfriend.”

-

The whole dating thing is something that you take serious as a heart attack, even though you can’t do a whole lot of dating-dating. You don’t go to physical school, and when you leave the house it’s usually only because your mom knows Dirk will be with you. He usually sticks pretty good to that, too, but there are times between Dungeons and Dragons sessions in which your wizard is amazing at everything and double dates in which everything is usually amazing where you can tell through Dirk’s very controlled façade that he and Caliborn want to go somewhere quiet and practice trying to suck each other’s faces off.

Which is cool, because that’s what you and Callie like to do, too. In ways that leave much fewer hickies on everybody involved, but that still manages to blow your mind.

Sometimes, you have Calliope over, too, along with Meulin and Caliborn and Dirk, and you all sit in the living room and draw together, while Dirk and Caliborn fight for control of the music selection. All in all, life is treating you pretty frickin’ well, you’d say.

Until you get The Letter.

-

You figure that the decent thing to do is to let Jane stay with you.

She went to the trouble of writing a letter, finally, that said she had some time off during spring break, and that her mother had finally acquiesced to give her time off from her studies wherever she wanted to spend it. And you guess if she wants to spend it with you, that has to mean something.

You’d always dreamed about this day. But ever since you and Dirk picked Jane up at the airport, the air has been pretty thick between the two of you.

It’s not that you want to be mad at Jane. Jane was your first everything: first friend, first best friend, first love. You want to go back to just how it was, but you can’t stop yourself from being silent as a graveyard as you watch her unpack. She puts everything away just as neatly as you thought she would.

“So, Roxy.” she says, and turns to you, standing with her hands on her hips and a nervous kind of smile. Her eyes are a lot bluer in person. She’s a lot curvier than you remember, too. You move your hands on your skirt, trying to brush off some of the very uncool clamminess that’s happening there.

“So. Janey.” you reply. The air between you is just getting more and more bogged down, like you’re both saying so much that’s just floating between you, like the sound is caught up somewhere. It’s weird, and uncomfortable, and you last a couple more seconds before you let spite get the better of you. “Haven’t heard from you in a while. I mean, a good couple months. March. Like. Half a year.”

“You sound like Dirk.” Jane says, chewing her bottom lip. The cute jerk. Nobody needs to be that adorable when you’re busy being mad at them.

“Well if Dirk sounded kind of betrayed, then yeah, I guess I would.” you reply, staring at your knees. You’re wearing your purple tights with hot pink paw prints, and all you can think about is the figurine she made you, and how miserable she’s made you, too.

“Roxy…” she said, smoothing out her skirt. Or maybe just getting rid of some sicknasty palm sweat, too. “I… Tried to send you a letter at first. And when it got sent back to me for revision because they said I was conducting myself improperly, I realized they were being read. And, well…”

Your eyes snap up to her and you squint. “They were reading your letters? Isn’t that like. Illegal?”

“I thought it was. But I guess it’s not federal mail until it actually goes out, is it?” she sighs, lacing her fingers together and pulling at them a little. “I just… I didn’t want to reply to you until I could tell you how I felt.”

“You could have coded it.” you sigh, and flop back on to the bed, frustrated with your own frustration.

She laughs. She doesn’t have dimples like Calliope, but she’s got these smile lines and this soft overbite that’s so cute it makes your heart kind of squeeze weird when you see it. Jane sits down beside you on the bed.

“I wasn’t smart enough to figure that, I guess.” she tells you, reaching over and curling your cowlick around her index finger. Her voice drops a little softer. “I liked your story.”

The fact that she smells like cinnamon and strawberry body wash is not helping you right now. Your heart is still squeezing in that weird way and beating hard, and then she leans down and presses her lips to yours.

And you are so, so screwed.

-

“Is everything alright?” Calliope asks, sitting down. You’re sitting in the swing next to her, kind of half heartedly kicking your feet. Staring at the ground is easy, because that’s where you want to be right now.

“Roxy.” she says, and her voice is doing that weird thing where she suddenly gets strong, so much stronger than you’re ever going to be. You bounce yourself on the swing a little bit.

“The princess is staying with me for spring break.” you say, and Calliope stares at you with those big, beautiful eyes of hers. The green in them is especially vibrant today, with the sky so clear and the sunlight so strong and new blooms all around you. It’s hard to see some shadow cross over them.

“Oh.” she says. “Well… I guess… That means something for us?”

You scrape a hand through your hair, messing up your bangs. Dirk is like a mile away, chilling under a cherry tree with Caliborn and Jane, and you figure she kind of makes the connection with who you’re talking about. There’s nobody here but the two of you, and you don’t know how to process.

“I don’t know. I’m really kind of freaking out about it.” You rub your lips together. “Callie. I love you, but-“

“You still love her, too.” Calliope replies, and leans against one of the swing chains, deep in thought. She’s got this hella intense way of staring into space, but you can see that she’s thinking real hard about something. Your lipgloss is going to be a mess after this.

Birds chirp all around you, happy as anything, the jerks.

“Roxy,” Calliope says, and your eyes snap back to her. “Is there anything really… Wrong with that?”

“Huh.” you ask, flatly, because you’re not quite getting what she’s just said. Does she mean she wants you to just pine until you get over it? Or. Wait, what else could that mean? You’ve watched a million romcoms and this has never happened, what does that mean?

“Well, it’s just that I mean… If you like her, then it’s reasonable to say she must be a pretty amazing person, right? She seemed nice enough on the car ride here.” Calliope says.

That’s right, you think – Janey and Callie spent the entire car ride talking about something called a special star dust cake, which was apparently some fancy concoction that involved like seven kinds of edible glitter. And that was with Jane knowing she was your girlfriend. They didn’t seem to have been arguing at all.

“So… Are you asking me to break…Up? With you?” you ask, kind of reeling, eyes wide. Callie pinches your nose.

“Don’t be silly. Of course I don’t want to break up with you. Or vice versa.” she says. “I just think… There’s room for more than one person in your life, if you want for there to be.”

“Oh.” you say, kind of stupidly. “You mean like a… Whatchamacall it, polyhedron? No, wait, that’s not right-“

“Polyamory.” Callie corrects you, rolling her eyes.

You snap your fingers and shoot her double pistols and a wink. “And that’s why you’re my editor-slash-artist!”

“Roxy.” Callie says, gentle, and you let out a weak laugh.

“…Sorry. Just. Do you really think that will work?”

She shrugs. “Probably not for somebody like my brother. He’s really possessive, in case you hadn’t noticed. But… I just don’t think you’re the kind of girl to drop me like a sack of potatoes just because you’ve got permission to date someone else.”

Your lipgloss is nonexistent by now. You have murdered it. “But how would I know if Jane agrees?”

Calliope stands up.

“Let’s go ask her.”

You spend the mile walk trying to convince yourself that this is a bad idea. But your babbling has absolutely no effect on Callie, who has adopted the kind of determined stride that would make even Dirk step aside. Which he one hundred percent does when she pushes past him, clutching you. When she gives him a meaningful look, he tugs Caliborn to the side with a two fingered salute, steering him in the opposite direction.

“Jane.” Callie says, and Jane sets her joke book down onto the picnic blanket, patting the space in front of her. “Roxy has something to ask you.”

“I do?” you say, before Callie gives you a reproachful stare that has you nodding your head and looking at Jane, absolutely certain you are going to pass out any moment now. “I mean, I. Yeah. Totally.”

Silence curls between the air, unspoken words making it thick again. That is, until you break down under Calliope and Jane’s twin, expectant looks. You reach forward and pick up Jane’s pink lemonade, gulping down a good mouthful like a totally unrefined moron. Oh well. If they both leave you, at least you’ll have your cats. Your cats will still love you. Probably.

“Jane, I wantyoutobemygirlfriend.” you manage, like ripping off duct tape. She blinks at you, blue eyes confused.

“I thought Calliope was your girlfriend.” she says.

“I am!” Callie replies, proudly. Why does she have to be so freaking cute when she’s like this? One of her long, green painted nails points at Jane. “But she wants you as a girlfriend, too.”

“So we would… All be dating each other?” Jane asks, and you shrug because you are honestly lost and helpless and you really need something stronger than a lemonade right now. Calliope also shrugs, but in her sharp blazer and with her sunny smile, it looks a lot less pathetic.

“Maybe! If that’s what you want. But I think the primary idea is that Roxy can date the both of us, on her own time.” she said. “I mean… I trust her. Do you?”

Jane looks at you. You look at Jane.

She smiles. “Yeah. I do.”

“Wonderful!” Calliope chirps, and you kind of grasp her shoulder with one hand, and Jane’s with the other, because you didn’t realize how long you were holding in your breath, and now it’s really caught up with you. Your head spins, but you feel two very warm, very different hands squeeze against yours.

“I didn’t think that would work.” you wheeze, and Jane giggles.

“Of course it would. I – We both love you, you nerd.” she says, and kisses your cheek.

You feel Callie’s lips against your other cheek, still grinning. “Very, very much.” she concurs.

Jane Crocker was your first everything, you think.

You’re so glad she’s part of your second everything, too. 


End file.
